Good morning, Whitewater.
Thursday in town will be a day of scattered thunderstorms and a high of seventy-nine. Sunrise is 5:15 PM and sunset is 8:32 PM, for 15h 16m 45s of daytime. The moon is a waxing crescent with 22.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s CDA Board meets at 5 PM, and her Police and Fire Commission at 6:30 PM.
Google has a doodle today to mark the birthday of Phoebe Snetsinger, who in her lifetime had seen 8,398 species of birds.
On this day in 1973, Secretariat wins the Triple Crown:
In the stretch, Secretariat opened a lead of almost 1?16 mile on the rest of the field. At the finish, he won by 31 lengths (breaking the margin-of-victory record set by Triple Crown winner Count Fleet in 1943, who won by 25 lengths), and ran the fastest 11?2 miles on dirt in history, 2:24 flat, which broke the stakes record by more than two seconds.[29][30] This works out to a speed of 37.5 mph for his entire performance. Secretariat’s record still stands; no other horse has ever broken 2:24 for 11?2miles on dirt. If the Beyer Speed Figure calculation had been developed during that time, Andrew Beyer calculated that Secretariat would have earned a figure of 139, the highest he has ever assigned.[31] Bettors holding 5,617 winning parimutuel tickets on Secretariat never redeemed them, presumably keeping them as souvenirs (and because the tickets would have paid only $2.20 on a $2 bet).[32]
The race is widely considered the greatest performance of the twentieth century by a North American racehorse. Blood-Horse magazine editor Kent Hollingsworth described the impact: “Two twenty-four flat! I don’t believe it. Impossible. But I saw it. I can’t breathe. He won by a sixteenth of a mile! I saw it. I have to believe it.”[33]
Secretariat became the ninth Triple Crown winner in history, and the first in 25 years.
A Google a Day asks a geography question: “What area of the country is the main benefactor of the electricity generated by the Hoover Dam?”